Segregated Proms for Black and White Students in the Deep South.

During this time of the year, high school seniors around the country are prepping themselves for the long anticipated prom night. In Montgomery County in south central Georgia, however, the local high school will facilitate two prom nights, one for the black students and one for the whites.

Segregated proms have long been a tradition in many parts of the rural south, but in recent years, students and parents in some communities have banned together and pushed for prom integration with success.

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Terra Fountain, a 2008 MHS graduate who now lives with her black boyfriend said, “Most of the students do want to have a prom together. But it’s the white parents who say no. … They’re like, if you’re going with the black people; I’m not going to pay for it.”

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Just before leaving the restaurant, a girl in the group named Angel checked her phone for text messages from her white friends and found nothing.

“I really don’t understand,” she said. “Because I’m thinking that these people love me and I love them, but I don’t know. Tonight’s a different story.”

...that they can turn into their perfect vision of Hell.

Tesha

By and large the only place you see black people and white people sitting down to holiday dinners together is in grocery store commercials. Even if you do see it in some limited form, about the only place where you are going to see six white people one black, one Mestizo, one Japanese, one Australoid, and a Heinz sitting down to dinner is a gay Christmas in San Francisco. Even then it would be rare.

In real life, black and white people work together all day long in offices and then go their separate ways at 5 PM.


Even so, it's weird to have segregated proms.

America (there is a black Miss America contest) or smaller, local separate contest; or a television channel, or a Black church or college, or a separate homecoming sort of thing on the beaches of FLorida?

heritage club or celebration days? It is so clearly different than white people refusing to associate with other races.

It's just that they have separate proms. From our distance, I think we have to remember what these proms might mean in that town as opposed to what they mean in major metro suburbia. My prom was just a big dance, a part of the graduation ritual, something some looked forward to and some attended to make their mothers happy. It wasn't this big jumping off point to adulthood. Marriage plans were not made as a result of it.

In this odd little place, with its 54 graduating seniors, apparently the prom is something more. And let's face it, most black people don't want their kids marrying out of their race/subculture anymore than most white people want their kids marrying out of their race/subculture.

Tell me you're 60+ because that's the only way I can even begin to comprehend your post.

Marriage plans made as a result of prom???

My mother went to her rural Missouri prom in the 50s - and even she would be both shocked and in laughing fits over your post. It sounds like it's from the 1850's.

You have a pretty high opinion of yourself and you like to attribute some evolutionary superiority to your circumstances and perspective. What it really amounts to is that you have a fairly narrow view of the world and because you are in the middle of it, you think the world is spinning around it. I get that because, and to answer your question, I used to be a young person who thought that wherever I was and whoever I was being was the axis of hip. Yeah, I grew out of it.

There are people in this world who are different from you, and the funny part is that you can't tell who is and who isn't based on your insular value system. So here's a primer for you:

1- Being biracial doesn't mean that you are necessarily more open minded about the races that you aren't.

2 - Being married to a person of another race, doesn't mean that you are necessarily more open minded about race.

3- Having biracial grandchildren isn't a measure of how open minded you are.

4 - Being civil to other kinds of people in business or social interaction doesn't mean that you don't harbor prejudices.

5 - Being a member of an insular culture, or even preferring the company of those of your own culture doesn't mean you are a bad person. Neither does choosing to live amongst your own culture. If you think that it does, then I invite you to explain that to people who live in tribes on reservations.

Oh and as for the 1850's remark? People like you amaze me- you like to think that you are so open minded, you pitch a fit if someone says anything you can possibly take the wrong way, and then you turn right around and talk about other people who don't live in your world like they are some obsolete tool of manual labor from a day gone by. How very superior you are. I'm surprised that you can even tolerate how slowly the world turns around you.

Getting mad at me because I'm not a racist doesn't change the fact that you hold some racist attitudes. And my suggesting that you might try to "grow out of it" doesn't mean I'm acting superior to you either. I'm sorry that your feelings are hurt, but really, somebody should have told you by now that your attitudes are beyond outdated. There is absolutely no defending these segregated proms. Honestly, I never even knew such a thing existed until the news started reporting the last few that just won't go away. If being shocked at such vile hatred makes me intolerant in your eyes, I'll take intolerant over your values any day of the week.

We are friends and family to many families of varying ethnicity/race and not only do none of them, to my knowledge, have any uptight prejudicial issues regarding such marriages but most all of them have examples of cross-ethnic relationships within them. I'm hardly at the center of some exotic, cosmopolitan mixing center either, I'm on the Great Plains.

And we're rural too. Marriage plans based on prom dates? What the fuck? Where do you get off with this MOST black people thing, or this MOST white people thing?

*shakes head*

BET and black miss america contests came about as a result of activism/entrepreneurship by blacks. That's a very different thing than white parents not allowing their white kids to go to prom if black students are attending it.

You could argue that black miss america came about for similar reasons, because black women were not allowed originally or were marginalized in miss america contests ... but in this age it's still different than schools sponsoring segregation.

According to the article, the school (which makes the news every year BTW) tried organizing a common prom, but nobody showed up because the whites and blacks each have their own thing that they do.

I was thrown off by this: "the local high school will facilitate two prom nights."

I don't know what they mean by "facilitate." At our high school, the school itself doesn't exactly sponsor the prom, but teachers volunteer to be chaperones.

Regardless of how hands off the school itself is, though, this part here supports the point I was trying to make about why it's different than a historically black college or black church:

"Perhaps the most disturbing twist is that all students are invited to the "black-folks prom," though whites seldom attend. Students say the unspoken rule for the white prom is black students aren't welcomed."

There are similarities between this and black colleges, black churches, etc., which is that none of them would have become necessary without white supremacy and marginalization of other groups.

Honestly, what a bizarre post. I think most of us have mixed race families these days.

I suppose it depends on how many degrees outward in the family you go. But how often do you have family dinners with third or farther cousins?

It's an observation. I can observe with my own eyes what happens at 5PM. I can observe with my own eyes that there are majority black neighborhoods and majority white neighborhoods.

So what is bizarre about that?

I really don't know where you live, but most families I know have biracial couples and children in them and have for decades. I grew up in a multi-racial neighborhood in the 60s so maybe I just have a different perspective.

I really don't know where you live, but most families I know have biracial couples and children in them and have for decades. I grew up in a multi-racial neighborhood in the 60s so maybe I just have a different perspective.

I don't doubt that is your perspective, but it's statistically unsupported. Interracial marriages are 4.9% of the total.

A marriage doesn't have to take place for there to be a child. I assure you that "mixing the races" is perfectly acceptable in the vast majority of the country.

And quite frankly attendance at any explicitly whites only functions in the real world is often frowned upon. Now it may happen that you attend a social function and 99% of the people are white. But it's not the same thing as being explicitly segregated.

When my niece got married, her Swedish step-father walked her down the aisle, with groomsmen and bridesmaids of at least four different ethnic groups. I don't know more than their outward appearance what their ancestry was, but I would say Asian Indian, Oriental, Arab and African. While I met the young people, I certainly was not going to ask where they came from. The town in Florida where she grew up is not known for being a very racially accepting place.

A niece from the other side of our family has dated young men of African, Puerto Rican and Brazilian extraction. Her sister has traveled around the world (literally) and has friends from every country she has visited - I've seen them on her Facebook page. When I visit my sister, their mother, I see a wide selection of people from all over the world at her house, friends of hers and of her children.

That family has been exposed to people from all over the world due to their proximity and employment at Disney World, but it seems to be normal for most younger people to have many interracial relationships with races we would not have met as youngsters.

My point was simply that these people, black and white, do this thing their own way. Honestly, while the newspaper article doesn't support this, I wouldn't be surprised if they do it to get in the papers at this point. As I noted, they get in the paper for this every year. But as we wandered away from the topic at hand, some folks seem to want to impose their idea of a perfect world on this place and I think that there is considerable evidence that they are barking up at least two wrong trees.

Is it dumb that there are all black fraternities, even as white fraternities have felt pressure from within or without to include members of other races? I first saw a black fraternity back in 1976 or so. I thought it was the dumbest thing ever conceived. I simply could not imagine why black people would want to have their own version of an institution which, to paraphrase the movie Fraternity Row, "is inherently broken and cannot be fixed". By the same token, I can't imagine why black people would choose a religion with a history of racism, or to create their own version of it. it boggles the mind. However, the desire of black people to have their own organizations, and their own space, doesn't surprise me nor do I think it's "inherently broken and cannot be fixed." Ethnicity is not simply about skin color, the skin color is what happens when people of a common heritage reproduce. With that common heritage is a culture, and members of a culture generally consider it to be unique, special, and worth preserving.

Point: It's not as bad as we sometimes make it out to be, though the deep south can still surprise you.

As a person once noted:

In spite of Obama's election we woke up to the same (racial) problems on November 5 as we did on November 3.

If the premise was that the world sucked prior to Obama being elected, then the premise is wrong. Bush sucked, the country didn't.

Last year, before most people even knew who Obama was, I went to a Memorial Day pool party at the Elks Club. I'm guessing that there were 200 people there. There were people of several ethnicities there, and they weren't all guests. When I was a kid- that would not have happened, members or guests. On top of that, the band playing for the fourth or fifth holiday in a row is a well known local band whose members are gay men from South Africa and Holland. OK, so that's a minor thing, but there are hundreds of minor things which add up to a big thing.

It's not just race though. Look at what has happened with the disabled. You can see them. In my lifetime, this is new. Having places accessible to handicapped people was a gamble years ago. It was a tremendous expense and effort and there really wasn't any guarantee that these accommodations could be justified. I remember reading in the newspaper, complaints about how much a wheelchair ramp was going to cost so that handicapped people could go through the front door of the big court house. It wasn't worth it, that was the argument. They could keep going in through the back door and using the service elevator to the first floor. The ramp got built. That's huge. What is bigger than that though, is that by increasing accessibility, and by making helpful technology available- the disabled aren't sitting in the house out of sight, or on the porch watching the world go by; they are using the new freedom.

I see that kid in his wheelchair in the marching band on the State Farm commericial. That's wonderful. You know what? So is the fact that you see chubby girls being allowed in cheerleading squads and drill teams.

Yes. There are still race problems, ones that are large enough to be measured in statistics rather than the sensational news stories which fuel perceptions without much regard for the actual situation or scope. The face of racial violence is not the same as it once was, and in pure numbers it's much larger than it has ever been. I suspect it's smaller in proportion to the size of the nation, but that doesn't help you feel better if you are the victim, or the parent of the perpetrator. Why would anyone think that the election of President Obama was going to put an instant or even expedited end to the wars between Black and Brown in LA, or the sporadic attacks aimed at various Asian ethnicities? Some of these issues are deep and complex, other are simply stupid primitive or criminal territory wars. Even so, where crime and hate has a color, it's not nearly as institutional as it once was. Progress is of little comfort to those who aren't in the front of the line, but that doesn't mean that progress isn't taking place.

As for President Obama taking office, I think it has had an effect. But it's an initial effect which can only be kept alive by continued success, which is true of any success.

had what were called "girls senior dances" and we had a white one and a black one. I did not attend either. This may not be true, but what I was told by black friends is that they were more resistant about ending that "tradition" than the white girls because they liked having their own dance. I am neither condemning nor condoning... and I don't know if it still goes on, but as of about 10 years ago, I believe it did.

I know they will eventually.